Days of Blood & Leopards
by Mikel Midnight
Summary: The Avengers' UK contingent, Lionheart and the Black Knight, face down an opponent who seeks to subvert the very soul of the nation.


Lionheart in, "Days of Blood & Leopards" by Michael Norwitz

She looked down from the skies, and felt her heart bleed.

Lionheart floated over the country she had been sworn to protect, and she saw only the grime, the grief, of an empire fallen. Only her children had tied her to this land, and now they were forbidden her. Save for her faustian bargain with the man named Braddock, she would long have emigrated to the United States. But her life was all she had to call her own, now, and that was only her's until she defaulted.

She paused in her flight to examine the sword which allowed her to suspend gravity's calling. She turned the blade back and forth in her hands, examining the inscriptions on its blade in a language far too ancient for her understanding. This was not the first time she had wondered at the history of the weapon she had once chosen, and she knew that one day she would be called upon to test her knowledge.

Let it not be too soon.

She heard a woman's scream, and winced. She tilted the sword downwards, positioning it as if it were sheathed at her hip, and descended to the ground. Her enhanced perceptions led her to an office complex. "Farnsworth, Unltd." The name sounded familiar to her. She narrowed her eyes beneath her mask as she noted the door was ajar. Sword drawn and steady, she walked quietly into the building.

In her peripheral vision, she saw a flash of white. She whirled around, but it was gone. A soft sound to her left, and as she turned she saw a blonde woman cowering in a far corner beside a desk. She walked over to her, and kneeled down, her voice soft. "Are you all right," she asked. "Had you screamed?"

The woman's eyes grew wide, her mouth opened and closed silently. Another blur of white, and Lionheart felt a powerful grip on one shoulder. She drew forth her sword, but a white-furred hand raked at her wrist with razor-sharp claws.

Reflexively, she dropped the sword, and then cursed to herself, "Amateur." Her fist lashed out, and she felt the impact of diamond-hard fists against flesh, and heard a distinctly feline yowl. She turned to see assembled before her crowd of felinoid humans, teeth and claws sharp, with malicious green slitted eyes. Their fur was white and delicately spotted.

She beckoned with her hands, "Let's do it then," and flew into the nearest opponent. Her power was greater than their's, but eventually numbers told, and she found herself seized by them, her uniform ripped, weals of blood across her skin. Her eyes sought out the blonde woman, "Get help," and she tried to distract her foes with another show of resistance.

The blonde woman stood up. Lightning crackled from her eyes. "There is no help." Her opponents held Lionheart fast.

"Who are you?" Lionheart asked angrily.

The blonde woman smiled. "I have most recently called myself Baroness Blood," she said as she approached the captive heroine. "Do you like my snow leopards? They are a loan from a dear friend of mine … but that's a story for another day."

"So this whole thing was an ambush?" Lionheart tugged at the powerful claws holding her. "What for? I'm not one of these millionaire playboy superheroes who can easily come up with a billion pounds in ransom money from my secret offshore account … "

Baroness Blood laughed openly. "No, my dear, I knew that immediately from your accent. You're more than just a superhero. " She bared her teeth, showing white, gleaming fangs. "Just as I am more than just a vampire."

Lionheart opened her mouth to scream, but it was silenced as she felt twinned needle-like points inserted into her throat. She felt the life slowly draining out of her.

The other woman finally stood back, looking down at her as she fell to the floor. "You're the soul of the British Isles," she said as she delicately wiped away a stray trickle of blood that ran down her chin. She licked her fingertip clean. "... and now I am as well."

Far away, a young man with an old soul wandered through a castle full of antiquities. He tilted his head up, as if sensing a shift in the wind, and muttered to himself, "Something's changed."

... and in the midst of a television broadcast the Archbishop of Canterbury turned beet red, and began chanting obscenities and ancient curses ...

... and gargoyles of stone, some on buildings centuries old, began to bleed from their palms, the soles of their feet, and from gashes in their sides; the blood black and acidic, it began to burn all it touched ...

... and crowds of skinheads, marching through the streets, gathered new adherents from random passerby to form armies, smashing and burning properties owned by people of darker skin ...

... and as she sat down with an ambassador from Argentina, Queen Elizabeth suddenly lost patience. "Orv wiv 'is 'ead!" she announced, and then resumed sipping her tea, ignoring the outraged complaints of the ambassador as he was dragged off by the palace guards ...

… and the radios played nothing but all George Formby, all the time …

... and the skies grew dark with the wings of bats ...

"Strider," whispered the man. As the winged horse appeared, fluttering down to Castle Garret, Dane Whitman spoke the word "Avalon," which clad him in the mystic armor of the Black Knight. He leapt up to mount his steed, and the pair soared skywards. He pulled on Strider's reigns; "to Otherworld," he said.

A shift, a flash of colour, and they were in a land of endless garden. Off in the distance they saw the ever-shifting contours of Merlin's tower. The Black Knight remembered the battles he had fought here, and breathed in the pure, unpolluted air. "Fortifies better than wine," he said aloud to Strider. "Something to allow us to retain our center, and resist the twisting of our natures which may occur as we pass back to our own land."

As they returned back to their native Earth 616, he compulsively chuckled to himself. His speech patterns always seemed altered when he was in that land, even his accent. He felt his contemporary mind reassert itself, including the trans-Atlantic accent which the Massachusetts native had acquired after years of living in the United Kingdom. His enhanced perceptions, finely tuned by their brief exposure to Otherworld, looked past mundane reality and saw how the soul of a nation has been twisted. He drew Strider into a charge; "to London," he cried out, and the windows of Castle Garret shook under the sonic boom generated as the mystical steed broke the sound barrier.

They arrived over London's central business district, an area of old neoclassical architecture which overpowered and shadowed the streets below. Banks, stock exchanges, and other financial institutions dominated the area. Suddenly a black cloud swept up to them, and the pair found themselves buffeted by the wings of a thousand bats. Strider whinnied, unprotected by armour, and the Black Knight drew forth his sword and slashed away at the beasts, attempting to clear a path.

As he sent countless small bodies falling to the ground, still more came, and they found themselves buried underneath. Strider bucked and kicked hysterically, finally sending even his owner tumbling off to the ground. The Black Knight cursed, drawing forth the Shield of Night to protect himself. It absorbed the impact as he landed, but it was unable to prevent his body from twisting as he manipulated his landing, and he felt a wrenching pain as his shoulder dislocated.

He grunted as he rose to his feet, and then braced himself against a wall. Gritting his teeth, he used the leverage to pop his shoulder back into its socket. Wincing, he tested the limb. Useful, but barely. He looked up to see the besieged Strider return to Otherworld and then proceeded, alone, into an office complex.

He was met by steel. The sword swung at his head with superhuman speed, and he barely deflected it off the Shield of Night. He drew forth his own offensive weapon, and assessed his opponent. It was a young woman with straggly blonde hair, clad in a filmy, ankle-length nightgown which barely covered her creamy white bosoms as they surged against the fabric, and her face was covered by a mask which bore the design of the union jack. He narrowed his eyes; where had he seen her before?

She swung the sword forward again, and he parried. She was relatively unskilled, but her speed and strength were clearly superhuman. Had he not been equipped with weapons from Otherworld, she would have taken him easily.

As his shield took blow after blow, he channeled the kinetic energy it had absorbed through his Sword of Light, and directed it at his opponent. Quickly, her own sword generated a force field which blocked his projection.

He instantly recognised the energy pattern ... in their days together Brian Braddock had frequently used that facility. It clicked in his mind, and he realised whom he fought. "Lionheart?"

She flew forward, and the battle began again. He realised she must have fallen again under someone else's control. A sweep of his sword sliced through her mask, and he verified her identity. It was only when she bared her teeth and he viewed her fangs that he had some sense of what form that control must have taken. He grunted to himself ... vampires were Joey Chapman's specialty, not his.

He backed away, and from the Sword of Light he generated the pure, clean sunlight of Otherworld. She screamed, and crumbled to the ground. He walked over to her, and from the shadows came another woman, tall and clad in royal purple, accompanied by a trio of feline humanoids whom, he thought, would not have looked out of place in Wundagore.

"Finish her off," said Baroness Blood, her own fangs glinting in the dim light. "You've won, it's time to end this."

He shook his head, "She is not my enemy here."

He directed the light towards her, and she laughed in his face. "Foolish man, I am not a mere vampire, but something far greater. Sunlight means nothing to me." She raised her arms, "By this light of day, I am the new beginning!" Lightning crackled through the small room. "Now finish her, or my pets and I will finish you."

Lionheart raised her face to his. "Please ... do as she says ... save yourself ... finish me off ... don't leave me like this ... I'm not worth it."

The Black Knight glanced down at her. "Hush, Kelsey," he said softly. He looked back at the Baroness. "You may be a new beginning in your own mind, but you have clearly never bothered to learn the old ways. A sword is not only a sword."

He inverted his weapon, so that his gloved hand held it gingerly by the swordpoint. "Accipe lampadem ardentem," he chanted, sunlight beaming towards the Baroness in the form of a cross, "serva Dei mandata, ut, cum Dominus venerit ad nuptias, possis occurrere ei una cum omnibus Sanctis in aula caelesti, et vivas in saecula saeculorum!"

Baroness Blood screamed an epithet at him, even as she felt her flesh disintegrating to the bone. He saw her transform to mist and seep through a crack in the door, and felt her attempt to hypnotise him into believing what he witnessed was ash.

"Next time," he said. He brandished his sword at the humanoid snow leopards and gave a lionine growl, and they scattered into the night.

He knelt down beside the weeping woman at his feet, cupped her chin tenderly in his hand, and raised her face to his. He could see the taint of vampirism had been exorcised by the ritual, even as his other senses told him that the taint had been driven from the soul of his nation.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"We're Avengers, you and I," he said. "We don't betray our own."

* * *

All characters trademark and copyright Marvel Comics, Inc.


End file.
